A Lot of People! | Day 24

Sarria Spain is where a lot of people come to on the Camino to walk the last hundred kilometers and get their Pilgrim certificate from the cathedral, saying that they completed a required portion.

I left Sarria at 5:30 in the morning and there weren’t too many people around. Just as I left town and got onto a dark trail, I saw a flashlight beam from a person, obviously didn’t know which direction they were supposed to go. This woman caught up to me and asked if she could walk with me because she didn’t have the right light for hiking in darkness.

This was Paula from Spain, and she is a national police officer, and I might add, in very good physical condition. We walked together the whole day, and she kicked my butt hiking up the hills. Of course she was one that came to Sarria to walk those last hundred kilometers.

I don’t speak much Spanish, and she doesn’t speak much English, but we laughed and used Google translate the entire walk and had a great time looking at old churches, amazing views of the mountains and valleys and we hiked some difficult terrain.

There were certainly a lot more people on the Camino de Santiago and a lot more services to cater to those numbers. There are more cafés, more performers, and more things to look at, including a guy playing bagpipes, farmers herding and milking cows, tractors moving around and new pilgrims doing strange things and complaining about very small, uphill, climbs. It’s all good and a lot of new friends were made.

Towards the end, we had to go down what I would refer to as a slot trail - very steep and deep with slippery rocks. The town we are staying in is Portomarin and it was mostly relocated up onto the mountain after many floods in the River Valley. There are still remnants of foundations and other structures in the riverbed. The bridge going across the river to the town on the hill now is very scary high. It kinda has the same feeling as standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. It feels like it’s inviting you to jump.